1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and an information processing program, and more particularly to an information processing apparatus that displays indices of a plurality of video contents, an information processing method, and an information processing program.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In recent years, reproduction apparatuses are in widespread use which reproduce video contents recorded on recording media such as semiconductor memories and optical discs. When a plurality of video contents are recorded on a recording medium, it is necessary to select a desired video content from among them, and generally a menu screen is displayed for use in such selection. When a menu screen includes, for one video content, character information such as a title of the video content as well as a thumbnail that is a reduced version of an image, it may take time for the menu screen to be displayed. This is because the image data included in the video content is encoded, and thus, a certain period of time is required to decode the coded image data in order to generate the thumbnail. This problem occurs whether the image data is of a stationary image or a moving image. Thus, there is known a technique where, at the time of displaying a menu screen, an image such as an hourglass is displayed instead of a thumbnail before the thumbnail is generated, to inform the user that the thumbnail is being generated. Although a method of increasing the processing speed for the decoding processing may be conceivable, it would lead to an increased cost.
When the user performs another operation before the thumbnail is displayed on the menu screen, i.e., when the user performs an operation to scroll the menu screen for example, the reproduction apparatus would not be able to accept the operation, or even if it could accept the operation, it would not be able to execute the processing in accordance with the operation, because of the heavy load of the decoding processing for generating the thumbnail. This would require the user to wait until the menu screen is displayed, leading to degradation in responsivity of the reproduction apparatus.